Even after seeing the now infamous 47-minute video that the IDF is showing to select people (journalists (one of whom tweeted this about his experience of watching it), US Senators, Members of Knesset, members of the White House staff, heads of the CIA and M15 and the New York Times editorial staff, including foreign bureaus, etc.), United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres could only bring himself to say that there were “reports” of rapes.
Reports. Despite the video, despite the testimony. “Reports.”
On November 25, UN Women FINALLY addressed the issue on social media, saying it was “alarmed by reports of gender-based violence on 7 October.”
On November 29, CNN’s Bianna Golodryga asked deputy director of UN Women, Sarah Hendriks, about the entity’s silence on the issue. Hendricks said they are “deeply alarmed at the disturbing reports of gender-based and sexual violence on October 7.”
Full statement by UN Women put out on December 1: “We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks. This is why we have called for all accounts of gender-based violence to be duly investigated and prosecuted, with the rights of the victim at the core.”
The United Nations’ hatred for Israel is not a new story. Guterres’ abominable attitude to Israel is old news. No one expects better from them. Look at the 150,000 rockets, many of them precision weapons, that Hezbollah has accumulated under the watchful eye of the UN in Southern Lebanon (the setting of the next phase of this war?—perhaps), and you know—the United Nations is an enemy of the State of Israel. That’s basically beyond contention.
But Israeli women were still shocked that 55+ days after the pogrom, UN women’s groups and other international organizations of women that report on sexual crimes against women were unwilling to simply state as a matter of fact that these horrors had transpired.
Yesterday, finally, there were some hearings. That the hearings finally took place gave me no satisfaction, almost 60 days after it should have been a closed matter. The content of much of the testimony given yesterday is not yet public. But the video above, of Israeli police officers giving testimony to police investigators about what they witnessed, is harrowing enough.
As more reports of the barbarity of what happened on October 7 (and may still be happening to some of the hostages) emerges, this is likely to be a country hardened in its determination to destroy Hamas, to not live alongside sadistic enemies—no matter what the cost and no matter how long it takes.
How long will it take? “At least to Passover” is what one hears officials saying. “Then maybe we end the war and just continuing with pinpoint incursions as we learn of things that need to be destroyed and enemies who need to be eliminated.” I don’t know if that’s true—I just know that it’s what people are saying to me.
This next year is not going to be for the faint of heart. For our kids in the army, this next year is going to be an eternity.
Israelis are increasingly exposed, as well, to recorded phone calls of children with their parents on that Black Sabbath, making us witness to moments of parenting that no mother or father ever imagines they will have to experience. The video with transcript below is an example of that. (We’ve added subtitles in English.)
These recordings, too, some of which are likely to become iconic, will be part of the PTSD of an entire nation that will outlive everyone reading this.
Others will speak for themselves, but I, personally, find it hard to watch these videos without being consumed by utter hate. And I know that I’m not alone.
The following photo has gone viral in Israeli social media in the last few days. It’s a simply photo of a bunch of boys, obviously in their Bar Mitzvah year (some already wearing tefillin, some not yet). And age of innocence. Twelve years old. Thirteen years old.
So why has the picture gone viral? Because of the three boys whose names have been added.
Towards the left, just behind the boy in the white shirt, is a boy in a green shirt. That’s Aner Shapira, z’l, whose acts of bravery prior to his being killed by a Hamas grenade on October 7 were related in a video which we subtitles and posted here.
On the right, with his left arm cradling his right should is Hersh Goldberg, whose left arm was blown off by a grenade in the same “shelter” in which Aner Shapira was killed, and who was then carted off to Hamas captivity. Nothing has been heard from or about him since. Hersh’s parents have mounted an international campaign to get him back. His mother, Rachel, speaks here at the United Nations.
In the center is Ben Zussmann, z’l, who was killed in battle in Gaza just a few days ago.
In what kind of world do three boys in a Bar-Mitzvah-age photo all end up dead or kidnapped by terrorists less than a decade later? That’s the question Israelis are asking themselves. They’re also asking themselves what they need to destroy to make sure that it never, ever happens again.
Because this is not what Zionism promised the Jewish people.
Three items regarding Ben Zussmann, z’l:
His mother’s remark to the press, after he was killed, that “it’s either the Nazis or us.” That is a national sentiment. It’s them or us. Costs to either side, horrific though they are, are not the issue. If they survive, we will not. Period. Apropos a nation of PTSD.
A screenshot from the Jerusalem Post with a photo of Ben’s funeral.
A video released by the IDF almost immediately after Ben fell, giving Israelis a sense of the battles that IDF soldiers are fighting in Gaza, and the degree to which they are exposed. It’s urban warfare—Hamas fighters in the buildings, firing from the windows, with our kids out in the open, taking the area one naturalized apartment at a time.
That’s the life our kids are living while we gather, in hushed tones, to have dinner with other friends whose kids are in exactly the same situation. The thousands and thousands and thousands of Israeli parents who know that their daughters and sons are “out there” living through the images in these videos will never be the same. Neither will those soldiers going through it. And neither will Israelis politics, or Israeli attitudes to the Palestinians, wherever they may live.
Here’s the IDF video from the battle in which Ben Zussmann fell (you don’t see anyone get hurt in the video):
In mid-December, I’ll be in New York for two events in conjunction with The Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership of Yeshiva University.
The first event requires registration (via the red button below); the second event is open to the public (there is also a pre-registration button for that event).
On Sunday, December 17, at 8:00 in Cedarhurst:
On Tuesday, December 19, at Weissberg Commons, Yeshiva University campus, Washington Heights:
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If you’re just joining us, Israel from the Inside typically posts a written column on Mondays and a podcast on Wednesdays. That is obviously irrelevant for the time being.
We’ve delayed all the podcasts that were ready to go, because the people whose stories they tell deserve to tell them when we all have the bandwidth to hear. Hopefully, that will return some day.
In the interim, we’ll post as possible. Here in Israel, there are non-stop funerals to go to, shiva homes to visit, grandchildren to help care for while sons and daughters are in the army, so we’ll see.
Schedules are the least of our worries.
Impossible Takes Longer is now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and at other booksellers.
Our Threads feed is danielgordis. We’ll start to use it more shortly.
This is a nation that will be mired in PTSD for as long as any of us are alive. [WARNING-verbally graphic video above]